Are You Asking Great Questions?
Curt Skene’s In2Win! Career Coaching Supplement.
One of the best ways to demonstrate your expertise is through the quality of your questions. Asking questions that create interest, promote possibilities and invoke conversation is a powerful way to build rapport and demonstrate that you not only understand their business but can offer them potential solutions. Great questions force others, including yourself, to think differently about a situation.
They also have the power to change the mood and energy in a room instantly so use them wisely. When used properly, questions can lead a discussion exactly where you want it to go or highlight a need or benefit an employer may not have considered. Before you start networking or attending interviews prepare a wide range of brilliant questions that will display your functional, technical and strategic awareness of the business and opportunity.
To get the most interaction use questions that start with “In your opinion…”, “How do you feel…”, “Where do you see…” Questions like these solicit opinions, insights and treat the listener as an expert. Avoid questions that are trivial, self-serving or closed as these questions can quickly “dead end” the conversation leaving little room for digging deeper. Finally, remember that a good conversation, even in interviews is a two-way affair.
Use questions to engage, probe and demonstrate to the listener that you really care.
Distinctive questions create better conversations and reveal insights that routine questions miss.
Why I Wrote This Page
Because the person asking the questions quietly controls where a conversation goes, even though the person answering usually feels like they’re the one in charge.
This is a well-known dynamic in negotiation and sales: attention naturally follows the question. A well-placed question redirects an entire conversation toward the ground you want to cover, without ever looking like you took control. Most candidates spend their preparation time rehearsing answers and almost none preparing questions, which means they walk into the room having given up the one tool that actually shapes the conversation.
Great questions do double duty. They demonstrate expertise while quietly steering the discussion toward exactly what you want the employer to know about you.
Action Steps
- Prepare five strong questions before every interview, not as an afterthought for the end, but as tools to use throughout the conversation.
- Favor open questions that invite opinion and insight over closed ones that just confirm a fact. Open questions keep the conversation, and the control, with you.
- Notice when a conversation is drifting somewhere unhelpful, and use a question to redirect it rather than trying to talk your way back on track.
In2Win! Afterthought
Curt’s current observations and updated guidance will be added here.
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